2010 Audi R8 5.2 V10 FSI Quattro vs. 2009 Ferrari 430 Scuderia

Audi vs. Italy: A German supercar with an Italian heart travels to Italy to claim its birthright.

In northern Italy, Ferrari is king. Lamborghini and Maserati might be just down the road from Ferrari’s nerve center in Maranello, but Ferrari is the only brand truly attached to the Italian psyche, a part of some collective unconscious. Somewhere in every Italian’s brain, tucked away between “secret to cooking perfectly firm pasta” and “how to wear pastel-colored pants without looking like a complete jerk” is the “love Ferrari” file.

The sight of a Ferrari elicits long awe-struck stares that fall just short of construction-worker-grade hip thrusting and whistling. Occasionally the sight and sound of a Ferrari will even cause Italians to literally drop whatever might be in their hands; indeed, a farmer outside of San Giovanni in Persiceto did exactly that, and he was atop a Lamborghini tractor.

Since 1996, Ferrari has won every Car and Driver comparison test it has contested except one, when the Ford GT one-upped a 360 Challenge Stradale. Nonetheless, the company frowns upon our comparing its cars against others. At the risk of Ferrari declining to allow us to test its cars, we keep dreaming up comparisons that might knock the brand off its pedestal.

Today, the challenge comes from Audi. With the exception of the Auto Union race cars of the 1930s and the Audi Quattro of the 1980s, the German luxury arm of the VW family is fairly new to the supercar game. But when the R8 was launched in 2007 with a 420-hp V-8, Audi was nipping at the heels of Ferrari and Lamborghini. But Audi’s latest R8 5.2 FSI appears to be after even bigger fish.

The main source of the R8’s jump on the supercar totem is its Lamborghini-sourced 5.2-liter V-10; you may remember this engine from such cars as the Lambo LP560-4 and the Audi S6 and S8 sedans. In the former, the engine makes 552 horses, but in this venue, Audi saw fit to give the R8 5.2 FSI just 525 horsepower. Even with that firepower, the V-10 R8 still has more ponies than Ferrari’s most powerful mid-engined car, the 503-hp 430 Scuderia.

To figure out where the new V-10–powered R8 fits in the supercar world, we brought together the R8 5.2 FSI and our favorite mid-engined Ferrari, the 430 Scuderia. Wondering about the Lamborghini LP560-4’s whereabouts? Let’s just say the right Lambo couldn’t be provided. Our 300-mile test took us to Italy, through the ancient farmland around Bologna, then into the Apennine Mountains and along the Po River near Milan, whose waters seem to be a kind of Woodstock for mosquitoes. Judging by the river’s ripe aroma, it could use a second “o” in its name. We figured if the R8 can prove itself in the supercar hotbed that is Italy, it can make it anywhere.